lives in Him and knows it. It is not a constant effort. It is the spontaneous direction of the whole nature. It is the new condition of the Christian who has been exalted from the human pride into the divine humility of life, out of self to God.
But I suggested at the outset that the word life was used in various meanings, and in connection with one or two of them I should like to develop a little what is meant by this phrase the “pride of life.” Life sometimes familiarly signifies what we otherwise call circumstances. A man is said to “get on in life,” not with reference to his growing older or growing healthier, but as he grows more rich, more prosperous. The pride of life in this sense would be the pride of success, which we see wherever men are struggling in this world of competition. Look at the young merchant who is making a living. Things go well with him. He rises from stratum to stratum of that commercial system whose geology is the ever-eluding study of the toilers of the street. He grows rich. His store begins to spread with the pressure of new enterprises. His house begins to blossom into the rich bloom of luxury. He is greeted with a new respect. He is courted with an eagerness he never knew before. Friends gather about him. His word has weight. His name means money. He is successful. What is the result? Those facts in themselves signify nothing, let us remember, but material capable of being made into one thing or another wholly its opposite. These are the gift of the Father, every one of them, all that profusion of life. But there is a possible effect of them all in character, a pride, which is not of the Father, but of the world. With a morbid sympathy the man assimilates all that is poor and mean and worldly out of his prosperity, and rejects, because he has no affinity for it, all that is good and sweet and heavenly. He is chilled and narrowed and embittered. All the old sweetness and humility fade out of his nature. Need I tell you of it? Our streets are full of the pride of life. Its types only, its outer types flash in the splendid carriages and blaze in the fronts of gaudy houses and sweep the floors of drawing-rooms and the aisles of churches. Those types, the mere outward trappings of success, are not wherein the badness lies. The reality is in the hard hearts and selfish tempers and undocile minds which, in the splendor or the squalidness of wealth, show the sad ruin of self-sufficient success, the pride of life.
The pride of life kills out the life itself. Is there a sadder picture than you have in the life of a man, old or young, to whom God has sent prosperity, who by his own act then turns that prosperity into a failure by being proud of it? Christ Himself has told us how it is. The life is more than meat. He has no tolerance for this little meaning of a word that He made so large. The life is more than meat. Yes, life is meat and man, and to lose the best manhood to get the meat, to lose the soul to save the body, to fail of heaven above you and before you that you may own the ground under your feet, that is not success but failure. “In all time of our prosperity, Good Lord deliver us!” May God help you who are prosperous.
I would speak again of what is called intellectual life, the life of thought. It is “of the Father,” indeed. We picture to ourselves the pure joy of God in thought. Free from so many of our cumbrous processes, free from the limitations of slow-moving time, free from all imperfection, with an instantaneous thought as is His being, the intellect that is the center of all reason revolves in its unfathomed majesty. And man thinks too. God makes him think. God gives him powers to think with, and then, as when you pour for your child a stream of water out of your cisterns upon the wheels of the machinery that you have first built for him, God gives man thoughts to exercise his power of thinking upon. Can anything be more humble? The power was from God, the thoughts by which the power moves were God’s thoughts first. “Oh, God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee,” cried John Kepler, when he caught sight of the great law of planetary motion. But mere thought, self-satisfied, seeking no unity in God, owning no dependence, boasting of itself, counting it hardship that it cannot know all where it knows so much, this is the pride of thought, and this is not of the Father, but is of the world. How arrogant it is! How it is jealous of dictation, how it chafes under a hand that presses it down and a voice that says to it, “Wait! what thou knowest not now thou shall; know hereafter.” How carefully it limits its kind of evidence, shutting out everything that sounds like personal communication, revelation, in its impatient independence; how studiously it orphans itself. And then how, in some moods, orphaned by its arrogance, it suddenly becomes intensely cognizant of its orphanage, and the child’s hunger for a Father takes possession of its heart and it is dreary and miserable!
I always know, when I speak thus of types of men, that you will think that I am talking of those types in their extreme specimens. I am not speaking to-day of the miracles of physical vitality, nor of the over-successful men with their colossal fortunes, nor of the mighty thinkers only. We all have our certain share in these various kinds of life, and each of us may make his little share a seed of pride. We are strangely ingenious here. We have an easy faculty of persuading ourselves that ours is best of everything and growing arrogant, unfilial and worldly over it. I speak to the men confident in their youth and health, to the merchants strong in their business credit, to the thoughtful brains at work over their problems of settling the universe for themselves. I warn them all against the pride of life. I would try to show them all that the same material which is capable of being made into pride is capable also of being made into humility. I would tell them therefore that they have not to be made old or sick or poor or stupid before they can be made humble, that the best humility, as well as the hardest, is that which can come to them here, right in the midst of their strength and wealth and study!
Do you ask how that can be? It is time that I tried to tell you, tried to tell how one may be full of life and yet be free from the pride of life. That question must somehow be answered, or else the world will be condemned to choose forever between an arrogant prosperity and a salvation by misery, distress and disaster, by death. What do we need for the salvation of a prosperous life? The answer in one word is consecration. Consecration, that is what we need. There have been men in whom life seemed complete who have yet walked very humbly. They had no pride of life. And why? Because always before them and above them there stood some great principle, some idea, some duty to which their life belonged, not to themselves. All work is modest, all idle self-contemplation is vain. And what the young man needs with his vague aspirations and conceits is to make himself the servant of some worthy purpose. And what the merchant needs with his growing business is to count himself the steward of some worthy Master. And what the student needs with his active mind is to trace the footsteps of the God of wisdom in the path he walks and to count the reaching nearer to Him, the true prize and object of all thinking. Consecration! We are proud of life because we do so little with it. It is as if the bearer of dispatches sat down calmly and boasted of the well-made box in which they had been given to him, and never bore them to their destination. Life is force, to be transmitted and delivered to a purpose and an end. It loses its true nature and sweetness, it corrupts into pride, when it is robbed of its true purpose and cherished only for itself.
We can find our example of the consecrated man wherever we see true lives lived in history or about us now, in the Bible or in common life. Moses, David, Paul! But why look at the poor, imperfect copies when in our Lord Himself we have the consummate human life clothed in the wondrous humility of His appointed work. The life of lives! and yet was ever any life so utterly free from the tawdry pride that makes our poor achievements so wretched and unsatisfying. You say He cut Himself off from all that men are proud of. Not so. He gave up house and home, but he carried about with Him always the devotion of the people, the mystery of unknown power and the consciousness of great work and influence, the very things that have always seduced the best men most and in their highest labors made them proud. You say He was divine and so could not be humble. Yes, but He was profoundly human also, and humility is not subserviency or meanness. It is a grace not unworthy of, nay, necessary to, even the perfect humanity. But one thing stands out always: His was the consecrated life. It was all given to its purpose. “He was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins.” “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” “Behold we go up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man shall be betrayed.” “To this end was I born and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” Everywhere the consecration, a life appointed to an end, the face set to Jerusalem, the hands and feet waiting for the cross! Meanwhile it was the fullest life, but lived so high that the “pride of life” lay all below under His feet and out of sight.
And our life must be consecrated even as His was. What shall the consecration be? Far be it from me to undervalue the exaltation into humility that comes to a man when he consecrates himself to any great and noble cause. I believe that it helps to save any man from pride when he gives himself to his family or his country or his fellow men, to truth, to liberty, to purity, to anything outside of and above himself, but there is a consecration higher and fuller and more saving than any such can be. We go back to the Cross. Jesus is dying there for us. He dies and we are saved. What then? When a soul “knows its full salvation” and sees it all bought by, all wrapt up in, that Redeemer, then in the outburst of a grateful love, he gives himself to the Redeemer Christ. There is no hesitation, no keeping back of anything. He is all offered up to Christ; and then to serve that Christ, to follow Him, to do His will, to enter into Him, that is the one great object of the whole consecrated life, and in that consecration, the straining of the life toward that One Object, the “pride of life” is swept down and drowned. Not merely the life then, but the use of the life, comes from the Father. It is not of the world. The soul is saved!
The salvation of the Cross! Its center is the forgiveness of sins which the cross alone made possible; but is not its issue here, in the lifting of the soul above the pride of life and consecrating it in the profoundest gratitude to “Him who redeemed us and washed us from sins in His own blood”? What humility! What self-forgetfulness! What unworldliness! What utter childhood to the Father!
My friends, my people, would you be saved, saved from your sins, saved from yourselves, saved from the pride of life? You must be His that you may not be your own! He died for you that you might not henceforth live to yourself but unto Him. You must be consecrated to your Savior. If there is one soul in my church to-day who is weary and dissatisfied with his self-slavery, I offer him Jesus for Savior, for Master! If any man thirst let him come unto Him and drink. Turn unto Him and be ye saved! You can, you must! His service is life, life in its fullest because life in humility. Outside of His gospel and His service there is the pride of life, and the pride of life is death.
GLADDEN
THE PRINCE OF LIFE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Washington Gladden, Congregational divine, was born at Pottsgrove, Pa., in 1836. After graduating at Williams College he was ordained pastor, and occupied pulpits in Brooklyn, Morrisania, N.Y., and Springfield, Mass., until 1882, when he assumed charge of the First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio. He has also occupied editorial positions, and has published many books on social and civil reform and the practical application of Christian truth to popular and common life. His style, whether he is writing or speaking, combines vigor with grace.
GLADDEN
BORN IN 1836
THE PRINCE OF LIFE[1]
[Footnote 1: From Mr. Gladden’s “The New Idolatry.” By permission of The McClure Co. Copyright, 1906, by McClure, Phillips & Co.]
_And killed the prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead._–Acts iii., 15.
This is the phrase with which Peter, in his great speech in the temple porch, describes the Master whose disciple he had been for three years, whose death he had witnessed on Calvary, and to whose resurrection from the dead he is now bearing witness. “The prince of life!” It is one of the many great titles conferred upon the Lord by those who loved Him. Reverence and devotion fell from their lips in lyrical cadences whenever they spoke of Him, and they wreathed for Him garlands of words with which they loved to deck His memory. He was “the Prophet of the Highest”; He was “the Great High Priest”; He was “the Shepherd of the Sheep”; He was “the Captain of Salvation”; He was “the First Born of Many Brethren”; He was “Redeemer,” “Reconciler,” “Savior.” Gratitude and affection shaped many a tender phrase in which to describe Him, but there is none, perhaps, more luminous or more comprehensive than this with which the impulsive Peter, facing the men who had put Him to death, gave utterance to his loyalty. Its pertinence is confirmed by the word of Jesus Himself, in one of the sayings in which He described His mission: “I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it abundantly.” Author and Giver of life He was, and what He gave He gave with princely munificence–freely, unstintedly.
The phrase seems to be one on which we may fitly dwell to-day, since the day of the year which commemorates His birth occurs on the day of the week which celebrates His resurrection. Both events proclaim Him the Prince of Life. In the one He is the Bringer of new life, in the other He is the Victor over death; and thus He becomes, in the impassioned confessions of the apostle, the Alpha and the Omega, the Author and the Finisher of Faith, the First and the Last and the Living One.
Those who are familiar with the New Testament narration do not need to have their attention called to the constant ministry of this Son of Man to the vital needs of men. The impartation of life seems to have been His main business. Somehow it came to be believed by the multitude, at the very beginning of His public ministry, that He possest some power of communicating life. The wonderful works ascribed to Him are nearly all of this character. The healing of the sick, the cleansing of the lepers, all resulted from the reenforcement of the vital energies of the sufferers. When He laid His hand upon men, new life seemed to speed through their veins. We have known some who seemed to have, in some imperfect way, this quickening touch. It is a physiological fact that warm blood from the veins of a thoroughly healthy person, transfused through the veins of one who is emaciated or exhausted, quickens the wavering pulse and brings life to the dying. It may be that through the nerve tissues, as well as through the veins, the same vitalizing force may be communicated, and that those who are in perfect health, both of body and of mind, may have the power of imparting life to those who are in need of it. The miracles of healing ascribed to Jesus must have been miracles in the literal sense; they were wonders, marvels–for that is what the word miracle means; that they were interruptions or violations of natural law is never intimated in the New Testament; they may have been purely natural occurrences, taking place under the operation of natural laws with which we are not familiar. We are far from knowing all the secrets of this wonderful universe; the time may come when these words of Jesus will have larger meaning than we have ever given them: “If ye abide in me, the works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father.”
The fact to be noted is, however, that the people with whom Jesus was brought into contact were made aware in many ways of the impartation of His Life to them. “Of His fulness,” said John, “we all received, and grace for grace.” There seemed to be in Him a plenitude of vitality, from which health and vigor flowed into the lives of those who came near to Him. Nor does this seem to have been any mere physical magnetism; there is no intimation that His physical endowments were exceptional; the restoring and invigorating influence oftener flowed from a deeper source. The physical renewal came as the result of a spiritual quickening. He reached the body through the soul. The order was, first, “Thy sins be forgiven thee”; then, “Arise and walk.” If the spirit is thoroughly alive, the body more quickly recovers its lost vigor. And it was mainly in giving peace to troubled consciences and rest to weary souls that He conferred upon those who received Him the great boon of life.
Thus Jesus proved Himself “the Prince of Life.” In the early ages of the Church the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, came to be described as “the Lord and Giver of Life”; but that was because He was believed to be the Continuator of the work of Jesus–the spiritual Christ.
There seems to be in this conception a great and beautiful revelation of the essential nature of Christianity. There are many ways of conceiving of this, but I am not sure that any one of them is more significant than that which we are now considering. Those words of Jesus to which I have before referred are wonderful words when we come to think upon them. They occur in that discourse in which He describes Himself first as the Good Shepherd, and contrasts Himself with the thieves and robbers who have been ravaging the flock. “The thief cometh not,” He says, “but that he may steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly,” Have we not here the great fundamental distinction between men–the line that separates the evil from the good, the just from the unjust, the sheep from the goats–that distinction which Jesus marks so clearly in His parable of judgment, and which must never, in our interpretations or philosophizings, be blotted or blurred? Some are life-givers; some are life-destroyers. “The thief cometh not but that he may steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”
I do not suppose that Jesus meant in this to declare that there is a large class of persons whose entire purpose it is to steal and kill and destroy; probably there are none so malevolent that they do not cherish some kindly impulses and perform some generous deeds. It is a distinction between acts, or perhaps between tendencies of character, that He is making. He speaks in the concrete, as He always does; but He expects us to make the proper application of His words. The fact to which He guides our thought is this–that there are ways of living, forms of conduct, which are predatory and destructive of life, and other ways that tend to make life increase and abound. When Jesus contrasts His own conduct, as one who gives life and gives it abundantly, with the thieves and robbers who kill and destroy, we must interpret the conduct of those whom He describes as destructive of life–as tending to the diminution of life. Indeed, it is a very deep and awful truth that all our social action tends in one or other of these directions. Life, in its proper relation, is the one supreme and central good; the life of the body is the supreme good of the body; the life of the spirit is the supreme good of the spirit. And you can rightly estimate any act or habit or tendency of human conduct only by determining whether it increases and invigorates the life of men, body and spirit, or whether it reduces or diminishes their life. Good men are adding to the life of those with whom they have to do; evil men are debilitating and depleting the life of those with whom they have to do.
Even in our economic relations the final effect of all our conduct upon those with whom we deal is to replenish or diminish their life. The wage question is at bottom a question of more or less life for the wage-worker. Starvation wages are wages by which the hold upon life of the wage-earner and his wife and children is weakened. Systems of industry are good in proportion as they enlarge and invigorate the life of the whole population; evil in proportion as they lessen and weaken its life. So all industrial and national policies are to be judged by the amount of life which they produce and maintain–life of the body and of the spirit. Those strong words of John Ruskin are the everlasting truth:
“There is no wealth but life–life including all its powers of love, of joy and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others,”
We have here, as you see, the Christian conception–the very word of the Prince of Life, of Him who came that we might have life, and that we might have it abundantly. And when His kingdom has come, this will be the end for which wealth is sought and used in every nation.
It is possible to use wealth so that it shall be productive of life; so that the entire administration of it shall tend to the enlargement and enrichment of the life of men; so that the labor which it employs shall obtain an increasing share of the goods which it produces; so that all the conditions under which that labor is performed shall be favorable to health and life and happiness; so that the spiritual life, also, of all who are employed shall be nourished by inspiring them with good-will and kindness, with the confidence in man which helps us to have faith in God. Such an administration of wealth is perhaps the very best testimony to the reality of the truth of the Christian religion which it is possible to bear in this day and generation. One who handles capital with this clear purpose can do more to establish in the earth the kingdom of heaven than any minister or missionary can do.
But it is possible to use wealth in the opposite way, so that it shall be destructive rather than productive of life. A man may manage his industry in such a way that the last possible penny shall be taken from wages and added to profit; in such a way that the health of his employees shall be impaired and their happiness blighted and their hope taken, away. He may do this while maintaining an outwardly religious behavior and giving large sums to philanthropy. But such a handling of wealth does more to make infidels than any heretical teacher or lecturer ever did or can do.
The fact needs to be noted that all the predatory schemes by which capital is successfully inflated and nefariously manipulated, and the community is thus burdened, are deadly attacks upon the life of the people. They filch away the earnings of the laboring classes. They increase the cost of rent and transportation and all the necessaries of life. They extort from the people contributions for which no equivalent has been given, of commodity or service. Thus the burden of toil is increased and the reward of industry is lessened for all who work; the surplus out of which life would be replenished is consumed, and the amount of life in the nation at large is lessened. Every one of those schemes of frenzied finance about which we are reading in these days is a gigantic bloodsucker, with ten million minute tentacles which it stealthily fastens upon the people who do the world’s work, and each one of the victims must give up a little of his life for the aggrandizement of our financial Titans. When such schemes flourish, by which men’s gains are suddenly swollen to enormous proportions, somebody must be paying for it, and life is always the final payment. It all comes out of the life of the people who are producing the world’s wealth. The plethora of the few is the depletion of the millions. In every great aggregation of workers, the faces of the underfed are a little paler and the pulses of the children beat a little less joyously, and the feet are hastened on that journey to the tomb–all because of those who come to steal and to kill and to destroy.
Such is the contrast between beneficent business and maleficent business. The good business employs men, feeds them, clothes them, shelters them, generously distributes among them the goods that nourish life; the bad business contrives to levy tribute on the resources out of which they are fed and clad and nourished, and thus enriches itself by impoverishing the life of the multitude.
And I suppose that we should all find, whether we are engaged in what is called business or not, that the work which we are doing, the way in which we are spending our time and gaining our income, is tending either to the enlargement and increase of the life of those with whom we have to do or to the impoverishment and destruction of their life; and that this is the final test by which we must be judged–are we producers of life or destroyers of life? Is there more of life in the world–more of physical and spiritual life–because of what we are and what we do, or is the physical and spiritual vitality of men lessened by what we are and what we do? Are we helping men to be stronger and sounder in body and mind and soul for the work of life, or are we making them feebler in muscle and will and moral stamina?
When Jesus Christ came into the world the civilization prevailing–if such it could be called–was under the dominion of those who came to steal and to kill and to destroy. Rome was the world, and the civilization of Rome, with all its splendor, was at bottom a predatory civilization. It overran all its neighbors that it might subjugate and despoil them; its whole social system was based on a slavery in which the enslaved were merely chattels; the life of its ruling class was fed by the literal devouring of the lives of subject classes. Of course, this civilization was decadent. That terrible decline and fall which Gibbon has pictured was in full progress. It was in the midst of this awful scene that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. Can anyone doubt that His heart was full of divine compassion for those who were trampled on and preyed upon by the cruel and the strong, for those whose lives were consumed by the avarice and greed of their fellows? What did He mean when, at the beginning of His ministry in the synagog where He had always worshiped, He took in his hand the roll of the prophet Isaiah and read therefrom: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”–adding as He sat down, under the gaze of the congregation, “To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears”? What could He have meant but this, that it was His mission to change the entire current and tendency of human life; to put an end to the plunderers and devourers; to chain the wolfish passion in human hearts which prompts men to steal and to kill and to destroy; to inspire them with His own divine compassion; to give life and to give it abundantly? And is it not true that so far as men do receive of His fulness, so far as they are brought under the control of His spirit, they do cease to be destroyers and devourers of the bodies and souls of their fellows, and become helpers, saviors, life-bringers? And is not this included in His meaning when He says: “I am come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly”?
To-day, then, we hail Him as Prince of Life, the glorious Giver to men of the one supreme and crowning good. And the manner of the giving is not hard to understand. He gives life by kindling in our hearts the flame of sacred love. Love is life. Love to God and man brings the soul into unity with itself; it is obeying its own organic law, and obedience to its law brings to any organism life and health and peace. If the spirit of Christ has become the ruling principle of our conduct, then we have entered into life, and it is a life that knows no term; it is the immortal life. If the spirit of Christ has entered into our lives, then in all our relations with others life is increased; we are by nature givers of good; out of our lives are forever flowing healing, restoring, saving, vitalizing influences; and when all the members of the society in which we move have received this spirit and manifest it, there are none to bite and devour, to hurt and destroy; the predatory creatures have ceased their ravages, and the world rejoices in the plenitude of life which He came to bring.
We hail Him, then, to-day, as the Lord and Giver of life. We desire to share with Him the unspeakable gift, and to share it, as best we may, with all our fellow men. What we freely receive from Him, we would freely give. What the whole world needs to-day is life, more life, fuller life, larger life. We spend all our energies in heaping up the means of life, and never really begin to live; our strength is wasted, our health is broken, our intellects are impoverished, our affections are withered, our peace is destroyed in our mad devotion to that which is only an adjunct or appendage of life. Oh, if we could only understand how good a thing it is to live, just to live, truly and freely and largely and nobly, to live the life that is life indeed!
Shall we not draw to this Prince of Life and take from Him the gift that He came to bring? Is not this the one thing needful? We are reading and hearing much in these days of the simple life. What is it but the life into which they are led who take the yoke of this Master upon them and learn of Him? It is a most cheering omen that this little book of Pastor Wagner’s is falling into so many hands and littering its ingenuous and persuasive plea before so many minds and in so many homes. If we heed it, it must bring us back to the simplicity of Christ. Pastor Wagner is only preaching over again the Sermon on the Mount; it is nothing but the teaching of Jesus brought down to this day and applied to the conditions of our complex civilization. It is the true teaching; none of us can doubt it. And I wish that we could all begin the new year with the earnest purpose to put ourselves under the leadership of the Prince of Life. I know that we should find His yoke easy and His burden light, and that there would be rest for our souls in the paths into which He would lead us. We should know, if we shared His life, that we were really living; and we should know also that we wore helping others to live; that we were doing what we could to put an end to the ravages of the destroyers and the devourers, and to fill the earth with the abundance of peace.
Is not this, fellow men, the right way to live? Does not all that is deepest and divinest in you consent to this way of life into which Jesus Christ is calling us, as the right way, the royal way, the blessed way? Choose it, then, with all the energy of your volition, and walk in it with a glad heart and a hope that maketh not ashamed.
CLIFFORD
THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
John Clifford, Baptist divine, was born at Lawley, Derbyshire, in 1836. He was educated at the Baptist College, Nottingham, and University College, London. He has had much editorial as well as ministerial experience and has published a number of works upon religious, educational and social questions. The Rev. William Durban, the editor, writing from London of John Clifford in the _Homiletic Review_, styles him “the renowned Baptist preacher, undoubtedly the most conspicuous figure in his own denomination.” He speaks of “the profundity of thought,” “simplicity and beauty of diction,” the “compactness of argument” and “instructive expository character” of this preacher’s discourses.
CLIFFORD
BORN IN 1836
THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS
_I believe in the forgiveness of sins_.–Apostles’ Creed.
This is the first note of personal experience in the Apostles’ Creed. We here come into the society of men like John Bunyan and go with them through the wicket-gate of repentance, through the Slough of Despond, getting out on the right side of it, reaching at length the cross, to find the burden fall from our backs as we look upon Him who died for us; and then we travel on our way until we come to the River of Death and cross it, discovering that it is not so deep after all, and that on the other side is the fulness of the life everlasting.
It is a new note, and it is a little surprizing–is it not?–to most students of this creed that we should have to travel through so many clauses before we reach it. It scarcely seems to be in keeping with the spirit and temper of the early Christian Church that we should have all this analysis of thought, this statement of the facts of Christian revelation, this testimony as to the power of the Holy Spirit, before we get any utterance as to that individual faith by which the Christian Church has been created, and owing to which there has been the helpful and inspiring fellowship of the saints.
I say it is a new note, but it is fundamental. When the Creed does touch the inward life, it goes straight to that which is central–to that which is preeminently evangelical. Without the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins you could have no good news for a sinful world; but with the assertion of this faith as the actual faith of the man, you have possibilities of service, the upspringing of altruism, the conquest of self, the enthronement of Christ, the advancement of humanity after the likeness of Jesus Christ.
A note it is which is not only fundamental but most musical, harmonious and gladdening. In the ancient Psalms we hear it oft–“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases.” It recurs in the prophets: “I, the Lord, am he that blotteth out thy sins; yea, tho they be as a thick cloud, I will blot them out.” It is the highest note reached by the singers of the Old Testament; but it comes to us with greater resonance and sweetness from the lips of the men who have stood in the presence of Jesus Christ, and who are able to say, as they look into the faces of their fellows: “Be it known unto you that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins from which you could not have been freed by the law of Moses.” With emphasis, with, strength, with fulness of conviction, with gladdening rapture, these men proclaimed their faith in the forgiveness of sins, and tho the Creed of the churches travels slowly after the faith of the early Church, its last note sounds out a note of triumph: “I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.”
It is the crown of the whole Creed. It is the flowering of the truths that are contained in the Creed. Let a man understand God, and let him have such a vision of the Eternal as Job had, and he is constrained to say, “I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” He desires first and chiefly to know that the true relation between the human spirit and God which has been broken by sin has at length been rearranged, and that sin is no longer an obstacle to the soul’s converse with a holy God, but that the ideal relation of the human spirit with the divine spirit is reestablished by the proclamation of forgiveness. For, as you know, pardon is not the extinguishing of a man’s past; that cannot be done. What has been done by us of good or evil abides, it endures; not God Himself can extinguish the deeds of the past. What forgiveness does is this: it rearranges the relations between the spirit of man and our Father, so that the sins of the past are no longer an obstacle to us in our speech with Him, our trust in Him–our using the energies of God for the accomplishment of His purposes. It is the restoration of the human spirit to right relations with God. Forgiveness of sins conies, therefore, at the very start of a right life. It is the beginning. All else in the spiritual life succeeds upon this.
I know there is a theory among us, and I am prepared to endorse it, that, if we are trained by godly parents in godly homes, we may grow into the spiritual life, pass into it, as it were, by stages which it is impossible for us to register. We are largely unconscious of these spiritual ascents; they are being made by the gracious use of influences that are in our environment, that reach us through sanctified folk, and we travel on from strength to strength, and, then, perchance, in our young manhood or womanhood, there comes a crisis of revelation, and we discover that we are in such relations with God our Father, Redeemer, and Renewer as fill us with peace, create hope and conscious strength. But I assure you that in addition to this experience there will come, it may be early, it may be late, some moment in the life when there is discovered to the individual spirit making that ascent a sense of the awful heinousness of sin; and tho we may not have such a unique experience of evil as the Apostle Paul had, and become so conscious of it as to feel, as it were, that it is a dead body that we have to carry about with us as we go through life, interfering with the very motions of our spirit; yet we do approximate to it, and it is through these approximations to the Apostle Paul that we are lifted to the heights of spiritual achievement, and are qualified for sympathy with a sin-stricken world, and inspired by and nourished in a passionate enthusiasm to serve that world by bringing it into right relations with God.
When, therefore, a man says, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” he is asserting that which, being turned to its full and true use, carries him to this goal, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” For a full and true doctrine of God can only be heartily welcomed when it is associated with the message of the forgiveness of sins. Otherwise the visions of the eternal Power may start in us the cry of Peter: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” When a man asserts his faith in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was crucified, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, who died on the cross; he is himself asserting his faith in the great purpose for which God sent His Son; even to take away the sin of the world, to make an end of iniquity, to bring in an everlasting righteousness; and so out of that faith he prepared for the response which the soul makes to the workings of the Spirit, the Holy Ghost within him, and he is able to say from his own knowledge of what God has been to him, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”
Friends, you have said this again and again, some of you hundreds of times. You have asserted it week by week. What did you mean by it? What exactly was the thought in your heart as the words passed over your lips, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins”? Was it simply the recognition of a universal amnesty for a world of rebels? Was it merely the assertion of your confidence in the goodness of God irrespective of His holiness? Or when you uttered that faith of yours, did it mean that you were able to say, “My sins, which were many, are all forgiven. My sins are forgiven, not may be–that pardon is a glorious possibility only–but are forgiven, not will be forgiven at some future time. I am now at peace with God through faith, in our Lord Jesus Christ”? Could you say that? Was that what it meant; or was it simply the repetition of a phrase which has been handed down to you by your predecessors, and which you took up as part of an ordered service, without putting the slightest fiber of your soul into it?
Depend upon it, the mere recitation of a creed will not bring you God’s peace, it will not open your heart to the access of His infinite calm. It will not secure you that emancipation from evil which will mean immediate dedication of yourself to work for the emancipation of the world. You must know of yourself, of your own heart and consciousness, that God has forgiven you. And if you do get that consciousness, that moment of your life will be marked indelibly upon the tablet of your memory. The dint will go so deeply into your nature that it will be impossible for you to forget it. Speaking for myself, I can at this moment see the whole surroundings of the place and time when to me there came the glad tidings, “God has forgiven you.” “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto men their trespasses.”
Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins? Then preach it. Tell it to other people. Let your neighbors know about it. I do not mean by preaching at the street corners, but by getting into such close affectionate touch, with your friends as that you shall be able to persuade them to disinter the thoughts of their own hearts, and show the sorrows that are there–sorrows produced by sin. For, believe me, behind all the bright seeming of human countenances there is a subtle bitterness gnawing constantly at the heart, consequent upon the consciousness of failure–the sense of having broken the law of God. I know that hundreds of people go into the church and tell God that they are miserable sinners. They do that in a crowd; it is saying nothing. They no more think of saying it in such a way as to place themselves apart from their fellows than they would of saying: “I am a thief!”
Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins? What, then, are you going to do with your faith?
Prove your faith by your works. Every time you ask God for forgiveness you should feel yourself pledged to a most strenuous and resolute fight with the sin you ask God to forgive. The acceptance of pardon pledges you to the pursuit of holiness, and yet we have to keep on with this doctrine, because it is not only the very beginning of the Christian life, but also the continuous need of that life.
We have to say night by night, “Forgive the ill that I this day have done.” And if we say it as we ought, as really believing that God forgives us, so that we may not lose heart, may never encourage despair of final victory, we shall get up next morning resolved to make a fiercer fight than ever with the evil that sent us on our knees last night. Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins? Let the joy of it come to you, and as your own heart overflows with the fulness of that joy, declare unto others God’s salvation, and teach transgressors His way. Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins? Then find in that faith an impact to obedience to the law of Jesus: “Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect”; and do not forget that He who begins the good work in you with His pardon will carry it on to the day of Jesus Christ; so that you may add the last words of the Creed: “I believe in the resurrection from the dead and in the life everlasting.”
It is not altogether a good sign that we have pushed eternity out of our modern thought. Confronted as man is every moment by a sense of the fragility and the brevity of human life, it is not surprizing that we should welcome everybody who comes with a message concerning eternity.
Is there not, in truth, beauty in the old Anglo-Saxon story of the bird that shot in at one open window of the large assembly hall and out at another, where were gathered together a great company of thanes and vassals; and when the missionary was asked to speak to them concerning God and His salvation, the thane who was presiding rose and said, recalling the bird’s speedy flight from side to side of the hall, “Such is our life, and if this man can tell us anything concerning the place to which we are going, let him stand up and be heard.” Brothers, a few days may carry us into eternity. “Boast not thyself of to-morrow, thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” Strong, hopeful, rich in promise of service is to-day; to-morrow friends may be weeping, kith and kin full of sorrow for our departure. This life does not end all; we are going to an eternity of blessedness, to progress without limit, to an assimilation with God that shall know no sudden break or failure, but shall be perfect, even as He is perfect.
MOODY
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Dwight Lyman Moody, the evangelist, was born at Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1837, and died in 1899. As a business man he brought to his evangelistic work exceptional tact, initiative, and executive ability, but the main source of his power lay in his knowledge of the Bible, his constant companion. In preaching he largely disregarded form, and thought little of the sermon as such. His one overwhelming and undeviating purpose was to lead men to Christ. His speaking was in a kind of monotone, but his straightforward plainness never failed to be effective. He usually held the Bible in his hand while speaking, so that there was little of gesture. His great sympathetic nature is spoken of by Henry Drummond in these words:
“If eloquence is measured by its effect upon an audience, and not by its balanced sentences and cumulative periods, then this is eloquence of the highest sort. In sheer persuasiveness Mr. Moody has few equals, and rugged as his preaching may seem to some, there is in it a pathos of a quality which few orators have ever reached, and an appealing tenderness which not only wholly redeems it, but raises it, not unseldom, almost to sublimity.”
MOODY
1837–1899
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?[1]
[Footnote 1: By permission of the Fleming H. Revell Company, owners of copyright.]
_What think ye of Christ_?–Matt, xxii., 42.
I suppose there is no one here who has not thought more or less about Christ. You have heard about Him, and read about Him, and heard men preach about Him. For eighteen hundred years men have been talking about Him and thinking about Him; and some have their minds made up about who He is, and doubtless some have not. And altho all these years have rolled away, this question comes up, addresst to each of us, to-day, “What think ye of Christ?”
I do not know why it should not be thought a proper question for one man to put to another. If I were to ask you what you think of any of your prominent men, you would already have your mind made up about him. If I were to ask you what you thought of your noble queen, you would speak right out and tell me your opinion in a minute.
If I were to ask about your prime minister, you would tell me freely what you had for or against him. And why should not people make up their minds about the Lord Jesus Christ, and take their stand for or against Him? If you think well of Him, why not speak well of Him and range yourselves on His side? And if you think ill of Him, and believe Him to be an impostor, and that He did not die to save the world, why not lift up your voice and say you are against Him? It would be a happy day for Christianity if men would just take sides–if we could know positively who is really for Him and who is against Him.
It is of very little importance what the world thinks of any one else. The queen and the statesman, the peers and the princes, must soon be gone. Yes; it matters little, comparatively, what we think of them. Their lives can only interest a few; but every living soul on the face of the earth is concerned with this Man. The question for the world is, “What think ye of Christ?”
I do not ask you what you think of the Established Church, or of the Presbyterians, or the Baptists, or the Roman Catholics; I do not ask you what you think of this minister or that, of this doctrine or that; but I want to ask you what you think of the living person of Christ?
I should like to ask, Was He really the Son of God–the great God-Man? Did He leave heaven and come down to this world for a purpose? Was it really to seek and to save? I should like to begin with the manger, and to follow Him up through the thirty-three years He was here upon earth. I should ask you what you think of His coming into this world and being born in a manger when it might have been a palace; why He left the grandeur and the glory of heaven, and the royal retinue of angels; why He passed by palaces and crowns and dominion and came down here alone.
I should like to ask you what you think of Him as a teacher. He spake as never man spake. I should like to take Him up as a preacher. I should like to bring you to that mountain-side, that we might listen to the words as they fall from His gentle lips. Talk about the preachers of the present day! I would rather a thousand times be five minutes at the feet of Christ than listen a lifetime to all the wise men in the world. He used just to hang truth upon anything. Yonder is a sower, a fox, a bird, and He just gathers the truth around them, so that you cannot see a fox, a sower, or a bird, without thinking what Jesus said. Yonder is a lily of the valley; you cannot see it without thinking of His words, “They toil not, neither do they spin.”
He makes the little sparrow chirping in the air preach to us. How fresh those wonderful sermons are, how they live to-day! How we love to tell them to our children, how the children love to hear! “Tell me a story about Jesus,” how often we hear it; how the little ones love His sermons! No story-book in the world will ever interest them like the stories that He told. And yet how profound He was; how He puzzled the wise men; how the scribes and the Pharisees would never fathom Him! Oh, do you not think He was a wonderful preacher?
I should like to ask you what you think of Him as a physician. A man would soon have a reputation as a doctor if he could cure as Christ did. No case was ever brought to Him but what He was a match for. He had but to speak the word, and disease fled before Him. Here comes a man covered with leprosy.
“Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean,” he cried.
“I will,” says the Great Physician, and in an instant the leprosy is gone. The world has hospitals for incurable diseases; but there were no incurable diseases with Him.
Now, see Him in the little home at Bethany, binding up the wounded hearts of Martha and Mary, and tell me what you think of Him as a comforter. He is a husband to the widow and a father to the fatherless. The weary may find a resting-place upon that breast, and the friendless may reckon Him their friend. He never varies. He never fails, He never dies. His sympathy is ever fresh, His love is ever free. Oh, widow and orphans, oh, sorrowing and mourning, will you not thank God for Christ the comforter?
But these are not the points I wish to take up. Let us go to those who knew Christ, and ask what they thought of Him. If you want to find out what a man is nowadays, you inquire about him from those who know him best. I do not wish to be partial; we will go to His enemies, and to His friends. We will ask them, What think ye of Christ? We will ask His friends and His enemies. If we only went to those who liked Him, you would say:
“Oh, he is so blind; he thinks so much of the man that he can’t see His faults. You can’t get anything out of him unless it be in His favor; it is a one-sided affair altogether.”
So we shall go in the first place to His enemies, to those who hated Him, persecuted Him, curst and slew Him. I shall put you in the jury-box, and call upon them to tell us what they think of Him.
First, among the witnesses, let us call upon the Pharisees. We know how they hated Him. Let us put a few questions to them. “Come, Pharisees, tell us what you have against the Son of God, What do you think of Christ?” Hear what they say! “This man receiveth sinners.” What an argument to bring against Him! Why, it is the very thing that makes us love Him. It is the glory of the gospel. He receives sinners. If He had not, what would have become of us? Have you nothing more to bring against Him than this? Why, it is one of the greatest compliments that was ever paid Him. Once more: when He was hanging on the tree, you had this to say to Him, “He saved others, but He could not save Himself and save us too.” So He laid down His own life for yours and mine. Yes, Pharisees, you have told the truth for once in your lives! He saved others. He died for others. He was a ransom for many; so it is quite true what you think of Him–He saved others, Himself He cannot save.
Now, let us call upon Caiaphas. Let him stand up here in his flowing robes; let us ask him for his evidence. “Caiaphas, you were chief priest when Christ was tried; you were president of the Sanhedrin; you were in the council-chamber when they found Him guilty; you yourself condemned Him. Tell us; what did the witnesses say? On what grounds did you judge Him? What testimony was brought against Him?” “He hath spoken blasphemy,” says Caiaphas. “He said, ‘Hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.’ When I heard that, I found Him guilty of blasphemy; I rent my mantle and condemned Him to death.” Yes, all that they had against Him was that He was the Son of God; and they slew Him for the promise of His coming for His bride!
Now let us summon Pilate. Let him enter the witness-box.
“Pilate, this man was brought before you; you examined Him; you talked with Him face to face; what think you of Christ?”
“I find no fault in him,” says Pilate. “He said he was the King of the Jews [just as He wrote it over the cross]; but I find no fault in him.” Such is the testimony of the man who examined Him! And, as He stands there, the center of a Jewish mob, there comes along a man elbowing his way in haste. He rushes up to Pilate, and, thrusting out his hand, gives him a message. He tears it open; his face turns pale as he reads–“Have thou nothing to do with this just man, for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.” It is from Pilate’s wife–her testimony to Christ. You want to know what His enemies thought of Him? You want to know what a heathen, thought? Well, here it is, “no fault in him”; and the wife of a heathen, “this just man.”
And now, look–in comes Judas. He ought to make a good witness. Let us address him. “Come, tell us, Judas, what think ye of Christ? You knew the Master well; you sold Him for thirty pieces of silver; you betrayed Him with a kiss; you saw Him perform those miracles; you were with Him in Jerusalem. In Bethany, when He summoned up Lazarus, you were there. What think you of Him?” I can see him as he comes into the presence of the chief priests; I can hear the money ring as he dashes it upon the table, “I have betrayed innocent blood!” Here is the man who betrayed Him, and this is what he thinks of Him! Yes, those who were guilty of His death put their testimony on record that He was an innocent man.
Let us take the centurion who was present at the execution. He had charge of the Roman soldiers. He told them to make Him carry His cross; he had given orders for the nails to be driven into His feet and hands, for the spear to be thrust in His side. Let the centurion come forward. “Centurion, you had charge of the executioners; you saw that the order for His death was carried out; you saw Him die; you heard Him speak upon the cross. Tell us, what think you of Christ?” Hark! Look at him; he is smiting his breast as he cries, “Truly, this was the son of God!”
I might go to the thief upon the cross, and ask what he thought of Him. At first he railed upon Him and reviled Him. But then he thought better of it: “This man hath done nothing amiss,” he says.
I might go further. I might summon the very devils themselves and ask them for their testimony. Have they anything to say of Him? Why, the very devils called Him the Son of God! In Mark we have the unclean spirit crying, “Jesus, thou Son of the most high God.” Men say, “Oh, I believe Christ to be the Son of God, and because I believe it intellectually I shall be saved.” I tell you the devils did that. And they did more than that, they trembled.
Let us bring in His friends. We want you to hear their evidence. Let us call that prince of preachers. Let us hear the forerunner; none ever preached like this man–this man who drew all Jerusalem and all Judea into the wilderness to hear him; this man who burst upon the nations like the flash of a meteor. Let John the Baptist come with his leathern girdle and his hairy coat, and let him tell us what he thinks of Christ. His words, tho they were echoed in the wilderness of Palestine, are written in the Book forever, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world!” This is what John the Baptist thought of him. “I bear record that He is the Son of God.” No wonder he drew all Jerusalem and Judea to him, because he preached Christ. And whenever men preach Christ, they are sure to have plenty of followers.
Let us bring in Peter, who was with Him on the mount of transfiguration, who was with Him the night He was betrayed. Come, Peter, tell us what you think of Christ. Stand in this witness-box and testify of Him. You denied Him once. You said, with a curse, you did not know Him. Was it true, Peter? Don’t you know Him? “Know Him!” I can imagine Peter saying: “It was a lie I told then. I did know Him.” Afterward I can hear him charging home their guilt upon these Jerusalem sinners. He calls Him “both Lord and Christ.” Such was the testimony on the day of Pentecost. “God had made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ.” And tradition tells us that when they came to execute Peter he felt he was not worthy to die in the way his Master died, and he requested to be crucified with the head downward. So much did Peter think of Him!
Now let us hear from the beloved disciple John. He knew more about Christ than any other man. He had laid his head on his Savior’s bosom. He had heard the throbbing of that loving heart. Look into his Gospel if you wish to know what he thought of Him.
Matthew writes of Him as the royal king come from His throne. Mark writes of Him as the servant, and Luke of the Son of Man. John takes up his pen, and, with one stroke, forever settles the question of Unitarianism. He goes right back before the time of Adam. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Look into Revelation. He calls him “the bright and the morning star.” So John thought well of Him–because he knew Him well.
We might bring in Thomas, the doubting disciple. You doubted Him, Thomas? You would not believe He had risen, and you put your fingers into the wound in His side. What do you think of Him?
“My Lord and my God!” says Thomas.
Then go over to Decapolis and you will find Christ has been there casting out devils. Let us call the men of that country and ask what they think of Him. “He hath done all things well,” they say.
But we have other witnesses to bring in. Take the persecuting Saul, once one of the worst of his enemies. Breathing out threatenings he meets Him. “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” says Christ. He might have added, “What have I done to you? Have I injured you in any way? Did I not come to bless you? Why do you treat Me thus, Saul?” And then Saul asks, “Who art thou, Lord?”
“I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.” You see, He was not ashamed of His name, altho He had been in heaven; “I am Jesus of Nazareth.” What a change did that one interview make to Saul! A few years afterward we hear him say, “I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dross that I may win Christ.” Such a testimony to the Savior!
But I shall go still further. I shall go away from earth into the other world. I shall summon the angels and ask what they think of Christ. They saw Him in the bosom of the Father before the world was. Before the dawn of creation, before the morning stars sang together, He was there. They saw Him leave the throne and come down to the manger. What a scene for them to witness! Ask these heavenly beings what they thought of Him then. For once they are permitted to speak; for once the silence of heaven is broken. Listen to their song on the plains of Bethlehem, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” He leaves the throne to save the world. Is it a wonder the angels thought well of Him?
Then there are the redeemed saints–they that see Him face to face. Here on earth He was never known, no one seemed really to be acquainted with Him; but He was known in that world where He had been from the foundation. What do they think of Him there? If we could hear from heaven we should hear a shout which would glorify and magnify His name. We are told that when John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and being caught up, he heard a shout around him, ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands and thousands of voices, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!” Yes, He is worthy of all this. Heaven cannot speak too well of Him. Oh, that earth would take up the echo and join with heaven in singing, “Worthy to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!”
But there is still another witness, a higher still. Some think that the God of the Old Testament is the Christ of the New. But when Jesus came out to Jordan, baptized by John, there came a voice from heaven. God the Father spoke. It was His testimony to Christ: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Ah, yes! God the Father thinks well of the Son. And if God is well pleased with Him, so ought we to be. If the sinner and God are well pleased with Christ, then the sinner and God can meet. The moment you say, as the Father said, “I am well pleased with Him,” and accept Him, you are wedded to God. Will you not believe the testimony? Will you not believe this witness, this last of all, the Lord of hosts, the King of kings himself? Once more he repeats it, so that all may know it. With Peter and James and John, on the mount of transfiguration, He cries again, “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” And that voice went echoing and reechoing through Palestine, through all the earth from sea to sea; yes, that voice is echoing still, Hear Him! Hear Him!
My friend will you hear Him to-day? Hark! what is He saying to you? “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Will you not think well of such a Savior? Will you not believe in Him? Will you not trust in Him with all your heart and mind? Will you not live for Him? If He laid down His life for us, is it not the least we can do to lay down ours for Him? If He bore the cross and died on it for me, ought I not to be willing to take it up for Him? Oh, have we not reason to think well of Him? Do you think it is right and noble to lift up your voice against such a Savior? Do you think it is just to cry, “Crucify Him! crucify Him!” Oh, may God help all of us to glorify the Father, by thinking well of His only-begotten Son.
FOWLER
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Charles H. Fowler, Methodist Episcopal divine, was born 1837 in Burford, Ontario, Canada, was educated at Syracuse University and the Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Ill. He was ordained in 1861 and after filling pastorates in many places was made president of the Northwestern University in 1872, but vacated this post to become editor of the _Christian Advocate_; four years later he was appointed missionary secretary and in 1884 was elected bishop. He was well-known as an able preacher and administrator. He died in 1908.
FOWLER
1837–1908
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
_Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his_.–Rom. viii., 9.
I read that with the conviction that it is one of the most searching passages that can be found in the Book of God. It takes hold of the question of our salvation as a very substantial and thorough question. It removes indefinitely, almost infinitely, from this problem of our destiny, all shadow of uncertainty or of doubt. It brings us squarely to the facts in our character. On the force of this Scripture we are borne up on to a platform where we stand with our hearts uncovered and naked before the eye of God.
This means that the saint must be great in the arduous greatness of things achieved; that there is no chance for sainthood by any fixt, imputed plan, but that our real selves shall test and make our real future.
I never read this Scripture in the presence of a Christian congregation without feeling that I have in some way chopped down through every heart with a great broadaxe. There is no whitewashing this passage: “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Not, “He will do tolerably well, but not quite as well as he might do”; not that he will get on after a fashion, and have quite a respectable entrance into the city of the great King, tho he may not push quite as far toward the front as he might have done if he had had the Spirit of the Lord Jesus. Not that at all; but, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, there is not the remotest shadow of a chance for him: “he is none of his.”
And so I put this at you, asking you, on account of the great fact that you are going hence, to so apply this critical test to your hearts and lives that you may see and feel your need, and that you may take hold on the great supply, and have that actual transformation of character that will justify you in believing that you have the Spirit of Christ.
The success of the missionary cause turns upon exactly the spirit of this text. I have no faith in the final triumph, of the missionary cause based upon any other ground than that of the honest, deep-down conviction of the people of God that the Lord God of Heaven wants this work done. I am here as a believer in a supernatural gospel–not with philosophy that may be framed out of the human life of Jesus, but with a religion that is based upon the supernatural life of the divine Christ. And I appeal to you on this subject of missions as to a company of men who believe in the divine authority of the Book of God; who believe in a blood atonement; who believe in salvation by faith only; who believe in the pardon of sin and in the regeneration of your natures; who believe in the power of the Holy Ghost; who believe, in short, in the sum and substance of an old-fashioned orthodoxy. And I put this cause upon you as such believers, knowing that, if such is your position, you have at least the large part of the argument wrought into the very fiber of your being, by which you cannot stop short of the conviction that what you have need of for your salvation other people will need for their salvation. You know that you need a divine Redeemer; you know that you need the divine pardoning of your sins; you know that you need the supernatural and divine cleansing of your hearts; you know that you need the divine, unbreakable promises; you know that you need this Word, and the way to salvation set forth in this Book of God, by which you know that there is none other name given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved. And so I come to you as to those who have had some experience in supernatural matters, with the cause based upon this Book of God, asking that your experience may be made possible for the multitudes beyond, who have not yet had this opportunity.
Let us take some of the simpler and plainer things in this question, that we may come up to it without any hesitation. Now, I do not need to go into the question as to what God will do with the heathen. I don’t know what He will do with them. I know as much about it as you do, or anybody else, because I know what the Book says about it. God knows better about this than I do, and will find a way that I cannot dream of. But, because the words are not uttered by divine authority, I dare not stand here and utter any word of hope for any man beyond the gospel committed to me to preach. This I know: That if the heathen have the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whether they ever saw the Lord Jesus or not, they are of His. And this I know: That if this congregation have not the spirit of the Lord Jesus, tho it may have seen Him, they are not of His. And this I know: That He will save a Jew and a Gentile on the same terms; that He will do no better for the Gentile than He will for the Jew, and no better for the Jew than for the Gentile. And if there was no other name given under heaven among men by which an ancient Jew or an ancient Gentile might be saved, that is true to-day. The Lord Jesus thought that these people needed the gospel, and that they needed it so much that He actually came and submitted Himself unto death that they might have the gospel. And God seems so thoroughly to believe that they need the gospel that He actually gives His only-begotten Son to die, that they may have the gospel. He treats the case just exactly as if He thought, at least, that they do really need this divine Redeemer. He has done, in every step and process of this great work of world-saving, just exactly as He would have done had He absolutely thought and believed that they needed a divine Redeemer.
And then I understand another thing out of the Book: That the very last and supreme utterance of the Master on earth grew out of His conviction that we should do exactly this thing. And see how He comes up to it, little by little! He does not rush suddenly upon it–He does not, upon any truth. It is not in the divine plan to flash upon us in anything. Truths grow; moral ideas grow. They come into the race little, and hardly able to stand at all; we can barely find them beneath us in the lower strata of our being. But they struggle into power and strength until they fill the field of vision. Nearly every great truth of Old and New Testament Scripture is to be found in the Book of Genesis. In Genesis you will find the principle of the atonement; you will find the division of animals into clean and unclean, foreshadowing sacrifice; you will find the principle of the acceptance of offerings that came out of the flock, and the rejection of the offerings out of the field; you will find the pardon of sin and the giving of covenants–all the essential parts of the New Testament growing with their roots away back in Genesis. There is the first declaration of the coming of this wondrous Redeemer. It was so dim and uncertain that it was hard to tell what it meant; somehow, somewhere, some time, “the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” It was so dim that our first great mother, when she had gotten her first son, cried out in her joy, “I have gotten a man from the Lord!” She thought she had the Redeemer, but she had only a murderer. It was many a century before the Redeemer would come. The truth was unfolded little by little; a little brighter it shone on the altars of the patriarchs; it was unfolded a little more in the visions of the prophets; was exemplified in the ceremonials of the temple; and in the fullness of time it came with the Master and His disciples and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
And then see, when the Master comes, how He takes hold of us, knowing that we are but little, and that we have to be lifted up and enlarged before we can take in these great truths! He says: “I have more to tell you: you cannot bear it to-day; I will tell you to-morrow.” And so He gives lesson and instruction, and parable and illustration, all through. His life, teaching these disciples, chosen on account of their particular adaptation for the reception of His truth; walking with them day by day, trying to lift their thought toward the spiritual and the eternal; teaching them that it is not His plan to put them on His right hand and His left, and trying to lift them up toward a spiritual and eternal kingdom. So He keeps on all the time, lifting them out of their littleness, saying to them later: “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the earth.” They did not know what to make of that. He was lifting them out of their narrowness. And so He pushes on still further with them, lifting them up, until, in the supreme hour of His earthly history–after His agony, after the cross, after He had broken asunder the bars of the sepulcher, after He had risen, and been declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead–He hovers over the Church, coming down to speak to them by the sea-side and mountain-side; appearing to them suddenly, vanishing as quickly; offering His hands to their touch, showing His body to their vision, yet all the time lifting them up, until He brought them to the thought and gave to the Church the idea of His ubiquity, saying: “Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”; and they appreciated the feeling that He was within hand-reach, and that this was a spiritual kingdom, and that they could take hold upon the great spiritual forces. And thus He lifted them up and prepared them for His great truth, until at last, in the supreme moment of His earthly history, we see Him yonder on the summit of the mount–the earth beneath Him, the angels gathered above Him–with His hands spread out over His followers, with the summit of Olivet receding beneath His feet. He cries out to them: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” And the unspeakable glory took Him out of their sight.
That is the supreme utterance of the Master after many a century of preparation, opening our hearts, bringing us to this great truth, and that this one thing He wants done is His final charge to believers: Go everywhere; teach, preach, baptize, agonize, give, sacrifice–out to the very ends of the earth. And lo! I am with you alway, and you shall lack no good thing. Surely, there can be no doubt that the Master, at least, thinks that these people have a great need for this gospel.
There are some who have an idea that salvation is to be the sum and substance of what we are. Well, I think that way myself: that, if you find heaven on the other side of death, you will take it over with you; if there is any condition of peace, you will take that condition of peace with you. Death will be no more than going over a seam in this carpet. The moment after death will differ from the moment before death in your essential character no more than any two consecutive moments in your life. If you are a mean, narrow, selfish, ugly, cross man the moment before death, you will be a mean, narrow, selfish, ugly, cross man the moment after death. If you find a good character over yonder, you will take it over with you. If you have a good character to take over with you, you will have it in the Lord Jesus Christ here. If you live on that basis, I think this is pretty safe that those millions out yonder in the darkness, plunged in ignorance and superstition, knowing nothing about morality and nothing about heaven–those millions want a chance, that the same law that governs our lives will govern theirs. I surround my boy with the best possible opportunities; I watch every book that comes in his hands; I watch every playmate that I possibly can that comes in his path; I see to it, as my highest business on this footstool–higher than my call to this pulpit–that that boy has a fair chance for heaven. If I push him out into the alley to herd with criminals, and be dandled in the lap of vice, and be familiar with all corruption, I have no moral right to expect to meet him in heaven. But if I multiply advantages about him, give him the best possible books and surroundings, make him at home with the Lord Jesus, so that he talks about his salvation and life eternal as he does about matters in the home, I have a good right to expect that the King will give me His eternal peace.
Now, I think that the law that holds over my boy holds over all boys in China and Japan and Hindustan; that, just in proportion as we multiply the light and the favorable circumstances about them, then in that proportion we increase their fair chance for heaven. I think it is sound in philosophy. I believe that, just in proportion as we act by it, we will be safe.
Now, they are plunged in darkness. They know nothing about our way of salvation, nothing about the pardon of sin, nothing about purity, nothing about righteousness, nothing about heaven. We want to multiply their chances to rid themselves of sin, and to take hold upon life, and make their way in the path of peace. And the Master seems to so think it that He says: “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.” And if they will believe it, as I read, they will be saved. “But how can they believe if they have not heard? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach except they be sent?” So the Master says, Go, send quick, everywhere. That I take to be the teaching of the Book concerning their needs.
But there is another side of it, and that is the side that swings in under the passage I have read this morning, and that is our side of it, our relation to the cause: “If any man have not the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, he is none of his.”
Now, what is the spirit of Christ? I will tell you: He came not to be ministered unto. Please remember that. Not to see how much He could gather into His own bosom out of the lives of others. Not to be ministered unto; not to be petted, and dandled, and lifted along and fed all the way, with no burden and no care and no work–not that. He came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; to pour out of His life into the lives of others; to see what He could do to make others blest; and “to give his life a ransom for many.” Not merely to give the little pittance that He could spare and not know it any more than one would miss the farthing with which he would buy his ride on the street car, but to give His life a ransom for many. And if any man have not that spirit, he is none of His.
Now I preach you a doctrine of salvation by faith only, and I put the emphasis on the word only. That is exactly what I need as a sinner: I want some sort of release from my past transgressions that will give me a new start. I have gotten behind; I am borrowing money to pay interest with, and I see no way out. I must have a spiritual bankruptcy law. Somebody must come in to my relief, or I am everlastingly undone. And so I preach this blest doctrine of the Book of God: “By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves: it (the salvation) is the gift of God.” I take salvation as a divine gift, and take it with a glad heart. It gives me a new chance; it unhinges my present struggle for heaven from the past transgressions of my life, and gives me an open door to heaven that I could not reach on any other platform. And so I preach this doctrine to sinners, knowing that it is exactly what they need.
There is another part of it that covers the question of our pardon; that takes all my past sins and wipes them out; that gives me a new chance for righteousness. Now mind: That pardon, that new life, that new chance works out all the time necessarily from my finger-ends; it shows itself in my life, absolutely, as certainly as it is there; and if I cannot find the fruit of it in the fruits of the Spirit, in the interest in God’s cause, in patience and teachableness, in gentleness and love, I have the absolute demonstration that I have not the thing itself. Saved by faith, kept alive, kept saved by work, in work, by grace in work. Let me touch that theology just a little. If you are pardoned, you are pardoned by the Lord in a second, through faith–when you believe, that is. Pardon is an operation in God’s mind concerning myself; you cannot pardon yourself. God pardons. If we are pardoned He can do it in a second, when we believe.
The next step in the case is, that there is not anything in the Book of God that gives us any ground to believe that in that same faith, or believing, or pardon, we will be instantly lifted up into the stature of a man in Christ Jesus. What I mean to say is this: That there is not one word in this Book that will justify any man in believing that he may be brought by any process to the stature of a man in Christ Jesus in a minute. But some good brother will say: “Oh! now I am just a little afraid that you are striking against that blest old Methodist doctrine of sanctification.” No, I am not. I haven’t said anything about sanctification. But I will. If you are sanctified, or cleansed, that is God’s work, through faith, and He can do it in a second. Now, understand me definitely, you cannot cleanse yourself. God cleanses you through faith in the cleansing blood of His Son. It is His work. You cannot grow into it. You can grow in it, but if you don’t grow in it you may know you are not in it–you are in something else. But you can grow in it, because it is God’s work, and He will do it when you believe. But what of that? What are you after you are cleansed? I will tell you. You are a clean baby: that is all. You are not a man in Christ Jesus; you are only a babe–cleansed, indeed, and greatly improved by the process, too, but you are not matured. Do not miss, now, the broad distinction between purity and maturity. You are purified, through faith, in a second; you are matured through many a struggle and many a year. God cannot make a twenty-one-year-old saint in one second less than twenty-one years. There is no platform marked over with faith upon which a man may step and be lifted up into the perfect stature of a man in Christ Jesus in a minute. It is not the teaching of the Book. But all the year, loving, and giving, and fighting, and praying, and walking in righteousness, you will mature characters, and by and by you will grow into the manhood in Christ Jesus that is set before us in the gospel. Now, if you come in here and tell me that there is a baby over yonder in the next square, that is three weeks old, and can talk Greek and Latin, and Spanish and Italian, and solve all the problems in mathematics, I will tell you that that is a monstrosity, and you don’t want that kind of babies in your house: they will turn you out in a few days. So, if you come in here and tell me that you have, down in your prayer-meeting, a spiritual baby three or four weeks old, that can teach all the old saints, and can tell them all about God, and heaven, and faith, and theology, and all about everything in the Church, I will tell you that that is a monstrosity. And you don’t want that kind in your prayer-meeting; they will turn you out before a great while. St. Paul says: “Ye are born babes, and ye are fed on milk”; and the trouble with too many of us is that we keep on that diet when we ought to be eating meat. The Master says: “First the blade, then the ear; after that, the full corn in the ear.” So I am free to say that God’s plan of making saints is to give them the divine germ–if you please, the supernatural principle; or, as our scientists would say, with proper environments, “That have the divine initial impulse,” but as our fathers would have said, “They got through at the altar”; born of God, and then cleansed of God in the true process of education and faith, they matured at the harvest. God gives us the start and the cleansing, and we have to do all the rest of it. He will give us opportunity for growth by loading and goading us, by setting on our track every sort of force to test us–to “polish us,” as the old Hebrew word means. When Abraham was tested he was “polished.” He will put us on such lines that, if we stand true to our convictions and walk according to the light we have, He will bring us on to manhood.
See how wonderfully the Word of God fits down upon this? Take that remarkable passage that, to me, is as beautiful as anything can be, where He says: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor”–I know what that means in the struggle under sin–“all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give”–I will give: it is mine. You cannot earn it: you cannot buy it; you cannot find it; you cannot dig it out. It is mine–“I will give you rest”–the blest pardon that only God can give. Then, in the very next second and breath, He says: “Take my yoke upon you”–that means work–“and learn of me”–that is more work–and, “For I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find”–that is yours; I do not give that to you; that is not mine to give; that is yours. “Ye shall find rest to your souls.” That is the rest that comes from the crystallization of the character in righteousness; that comes from the habit of believing, and the habit of obeying, and the habit of praying; from the habit of righteousness, until the old saint is ready for any struggle, and never expects to be turned aside. That, I take it, is God’s plan of building up saints, and for fitting them for the rest that is in God, that abides.
WHYTE
EXPERIENCE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Alexander Whyte, senior minister of St. George’s Free Church, Edinburgh, was born at Kirriemuir (Thrums), Scotland, in 1837. He was educated at Aberdeen University (M.A., 1862), and at New College, Edinburgh (1862-66), and after being assistant minister of Free St. John’s, Glasgow, from 1866 to 1870, became at first assistant minister, and later (1873) minister, of Free St. George’s, Edinburgh, a position which be still retains, having had there an uninterrupted success. He is the author of a number of biographies, his most recent work being “An Appreciation of Newman.”
WHYTE
BORN IN 1837
EXPERIENCE
_And patience; experience; and experience, hope_.–Romans v., 4.
The deeper we search into the Holy Scriptures the more experimental matter do we discover in that divine Book. Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament the spiritual experiences of godly men form a large part of the sacred record. And it gives a very fresh and a very impressive interest to many parts of the heavenly Book when we see how much of its contents are made up of God’s ways with His people as well as of their ways with Him. In other words, when we see how much of purely experimental matter is gathered up into the Word of God. In a brilliant treatise published the other year, entitled, “The Gospel in the Gospels,” the author applies this experimental test even to our Lord’s teaching and preaching. Writing of the beatitudes in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount that fresh and penetrating writer says: “When our Savior speaks to us concerning what constitutes our true blessedness He is simply describing His own experience. The beatitudes are not the immediate revelation of His Godhead, they are much more the impressive testimony of His manhood. He knew the truth of what He was saying because He had verified it all in Himself for thirty experimental years.” Now if that is so demonstrably true of so many of our Lord’s contributions to Holy Scripture, in the nature of things, how much more must it be true of the experimental contributions that David and Paul have made to the same sacred record. And we ourselves are but imitating them in their great experimental methods when we give our very closest attention to personal and spiritual religion, both in ourselves and in all our predecessors and in all our own contemporaries in the life of grace in all lands and in all languages.
Now by far the deepest and by far the most personal experience of every spiritually minded man is his experience of his own inward sinfulness. The sinfulness of his sin; the malignity of his sin; the ungodliness and the inhumanity of his sin; the dominion that his sin still has over him; the simply indescribable evil of his sin in every way: all that is a matter, not of any man’s doctrine and authority; all that is the personal experience and the scientific certainty, as we say, of every spiritually minded man; every man, that is, who takes any true observation of what goes on in his own heart. The simply unspeakable sinfulness of our own hearts is not the doctrine of David, and of Christ, and of Paul, and of Luther, and of Calvin, and of Bunyan, and of Edwards, and of Shepard only. It is their universal doctrine, indeed, it could not be otherwise; but it is also the every-day experience and the every-day agony of every man among ourselves whose eyes are open upon his own heart.
And then, if you are that spiritually enlightened man, from the day when you begin to have that heart-sore experience of yourself you will begin to search for and to discover those great passages of Holy Scripture that contain the recorded experiences of men like yourself. “I am but dust and ashes,” said the first father of all penitent and believing and praying men. “I am vile,” sobs Job. “Behold, I am vile, and I will lay my hand upon my mouth. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” And David has scarcely heart or a pen for anything else. “There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. My loins are filled with a loathsome disease. For, behold, I was shapen in iniquity.” And Daniel, the most blameless of men and a man greatly beloved in heaven and on earth: “I was left alone and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned to corruption, and I retained no strength.” And every truly spiritually minded man has Paul’s great experimental passage by heart; that great experimental and autobiographic passage which has kept so many of God’s most experienced saints from absolute despair, as so many of them have testified. Yes! There were experimental minds long before Bacon and there was a great experimental literature long before the Essays and the “Advancement” and the “_Instauratio Magna_.”
And then among many other alterations of intellectual insight and spiritual taste that will come to you with your open eyes, there will be your new taste, not only for your Bible, but also for spiritual and experimental preaching. The spiritual preachers of our day are constantly being blamed for not tuning their pulpits to the new themes of our so progressive day. Scientific themes are prest upon them and critical themes and social themes and such like. But your new experience of your own sinfulness and of God’s salvation: your new need and your new taste for spiritual and experimental truth will not lead you to join in that stupid demand. As intelligent men you will know where to find all the new themes of your new day and you will be diligent students of them all, so far as your duty lies that way, and so far as your ability and your opportunity go; but not on the Lord’s Day and not in His house of prayer and praise. The more inward, and the more spiritual, and the more experimental, your own religion becomes, the more will you value inward, and spiritual, and experimental preaching. And the more will you resent the intrusion into the evangelical pulpit of those secular matters that so much absorb unspiritual men. There is another equally impertinent advice that our preachers are continually having thrust upon them from the same secular quarter. And that is that they ought entirely to drop the old language of the Scriptures, and the creeds, and the classical preachers, and ought to substitute for it the scientific and the journalistic jargon of the passing day. But with your ever-deepening knowledge of yourselves and with the disciplined and refined taste that will accompany such knowledge you will rather demand of your preachers more and more depth of spiritual preaching and more and more purity of spiritual style. And then more and more your estimates of preaching and your appreciations of preachers will have real insight and real value and real weight with us. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” But he that is spiritual discerneth spiritual things and spiritual persons and he has the true authority to speak and to write about them.
And then, for all doubting and skeptically disposed persons among you, your own experience of your evil heart, if you will receive that experience and will seriously attend to it, that will prove to you the true apologetic for the theism of the Holy Scriptures and for the soul-saving faith of Jesus Christ. What is it about which you are in such debate and doubt? Is it about the most fundamental of all facts–the existence, and the nature, and the grace, and the government of Almighty God? Well, if you are really in earnest to know the truth, take this way of it: this way that has brought light and peace of mind to so many men. Turn away at once and forever from all your unbecoming debates about your Maker and Preserver and turn to what is beyond all debate, your own experience of yourselves. There is nothing else of which you can be so sure and certain as of the sin and the misery of your own evil hearts, your own evil hearts so full of self-seeking, and envy, and malice, and pride, and hatred, and revenge, and lust. And on the other hand, there is nothing of which you can be so convinced as that love, and humility, and meekness, and purity, and benevolence, and brotherly kindness, are your true happiness, or would be, if you could only attain to all these beatitudes. Well, Jesus Christ has attained to them all. And Jesus Christ came into this world at first, and He still comes into it by His Word and by His Spirit in order that you may attain to all His goodness and all His truth and may thus escape forever from all your own ignorance and evil. As William Law, the prince of apologists, has it: “Atheism is not the denial of a first omnipotent cause. Real atheism is not that at all. Real atheism is purely and solely nothing else but the disowning, and the forsaking, and the renouncing of the goodness, and the virtue, and the benevolence and the meekness, of the divine nature: that divine nature which has made itself so experimental and so self-evident in us all. And as this experimental and self-evident knowledge is the only sure knowledge you can have of God; even so, it is such a knowledge that cannot be doubted or debated away. For it is as sure and as self-evident as is your own experience.” And so is it through all the succeeding doctrines of grace and truth: The incarnation of the divine Son: His life, His death, His resurrection, and His intercession: and then your own life of faith, and prayer, and holy obedience: and then your death, “dear in God’s sight.” Beginning with this continually experienced need of God, all these things will follow, with an intellectual, and a moral, and a spiritual demonstration, that will soon place them beyond all debate or doubt to you. Only know thyself and admit the knowledge: and all else will follow as sure as the morning sun follows the dark midnight.
And then in all these ways, you will attain to a religious experience of your own, that will be wholly and exclusively your own. It will not be David’s experience, nor Paul’s, nor Luther’s, nor Bunyan’s; much as you will study their experiences, comparing them all with your own. As you go deeper and ever deeper, into your own spiritual experience, you will gradually gather a select and an invaluable library of such experiences, and you will less and less read anything else with very much interest or delight. But your own unwritten experience will, all the time, be your own, and in your own spiritual experience you will have no exact fellow. For your tribulations, which work in you your experience,–as the text has it,–your tribulations are such that in all your experimental reading in the Bible, in spiritual biography, in spiritual autobiography, you have never met the like of them. Either the writers have been afraid to speak out the whole truth about their tribulations; or, what is far more likely, they had no tribulations for a moment to match with yours. There has not been another so weak and so evil heart as yours since weak and evil hearts began to be; nor an evil life quite like yours; nor surrounding circumstances so cross-bearing as yours; nor a sinner, beset with all manner of temptations and trials, behind and before, like you. So much are you alone that, if your fifty-first Psalm, or your seventh of the Romans, or your “Confessions,” or your “Private Devotions,” or your “Grace Abounding,” could ever venture to be all honestly and wholly written and published, your name would, far and away, eclipse them all. You do not know what a singular and what an original and what an unheard-of experience your experience is destined to be; if only you do not break down under it; as you must not and will not do.
Begin, then, to make some new experiments upon a new life of faith, and of the obedience of faith. And begin to-day. If in anything you have been following a false and an unphilosophical and an unscriptural way of life, leave that wrong and evil way at once. Be true Baconians, at once, as all the true men of science will tell you to be. “If we were religious men like you,” they will all say to you, “we would do, and at once, what you are now being told to do. We would not debate, or doubt, but we would make experiment, and would follow out the experience”: so all the scientifically minded men will say to you. Come away then, and make some new experiments from this morning. For one thing, make a new experiment on secret prayer. And then come forth from your place of secret prayer and make immediate experiment on more love, and more patience, and more consideration for other men, and, especially, for the men of your own household. Be more generous-minded, and more open-handed, as God has been so generous-minded, and so open-handed toward you: if that has indeed been so. Make experiment upon the poor and the needy and help them according to your ability and opportunity and watch the result of the experiment upon yourself; and so on, as your awakened conscience, and as the regenerate part of your own heart, will prompt you and will encourage you to do.
Make such experiments as these and see if a new peace of conscience and a new happiness of heart does not begin to come to you, according to that great experimental psalm,–“Oh, that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.”
WATKINSON
THE TRANSFIGURED SACKCLOTH
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
William L. Watkinson, Wesleyan minister, was born at Hull, 1838, was educated privately and rose to eminence as a preacher and writer. The Rev. William Durban calls him “The classic preacher of British Methodism.” “He ranks,” says Dr. Durban, “with Dr. Dallinger and the Rev. Thomas Gunn Selby as the three most learned and refined of living preachers in the English Methodist pulpit. Dr. Watkinson is famous for the glittering illustrations which adorn his style. These are for the most part gathered from biography, the classics, and science, and of late years Dr. Watkinson has become more and more addicted to spiritualizing the aspects of modern scientific discovery. Dr. Watkinson never reads his utterances from a manuscript. Nor does he preach memoriter, as far as the language of his addresses is concerned. They are always carefully thought out and are never characterized by florid diction. His simple, strong Anglo-Saxon endears him to the people, for he is never guilty of an obscure sentence. He is in the habit of saying, ‘I have always been aware that I have no power of voice for declamation, and therefore I can only hope for success in the pulpit by originality of thought.'” He was president of the Wesleyan Conference, 1897-1898, and editor of the _Wesleyan Church_, 1893-1890. He has published several volumes of sermons.
WATKINSON
BORN IN 1838
THE TRANSFIGURED SACKCLOTH[1]
[Footnote: Printed by permission of B.P. Button & Company from “The Transfigured Sackcloth and Other Sermons,” by W.L. Watkinson.]
_For none might enter into the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth_.–Esther iv., 2.
The sign of affliction was thus excluded from the Persian court in order that royalty might not be discomposed. The monarch was to see bright raiment, flowers, pageantry, smiling faces only; to hear only the voices of singing men and singing women; no smatch of the abounding wormwood of life was to touch his lip, no glimpse of its we to disturb his serenity. The master of an empire spreading from India to Ethiopia was not to be annoyed by a passing shadow of mortality. Now, this disposition to place an interdict on disagreeable and painful things still survives. Men of all ranks and conditions ingeniously hide from themselves the dark facts of life–putting these aside, ignoring, disguising, forgetting, denying them. Revelation, however, lends no sanction to this habit of passing by the tragedy of life with averted face; and in this discourse we wish to show the entire reasonableness of revelation in its frank recognition of the dark aspects of existence. Christianity is sometimes scouted as “the religion of sorrow,” and many amongst us are ready to avow that the Persian forbidding the sackcloth is more to their taste than the Egyptian or the Christian dragging the corpse through the banquet; but we confidently contend that the recognition by Christ of the morbid phases of human life is altogether wise and gracious.
I. We consider, first, the recognition by revelation of sin. Sackcloth is the outward and visible sign of sin, guilt, and misery. How men shut their eyes to this most terrible reality–coolly ignoring, skilfully veiling, emphatically denying it! “The heart from the moment of its first beat instinctively longs for the beautiful….” We strive for the right and the true: it is circumstance that thrusts wrong upon us. What is popularly called sin these philosophers call error, accident, inexperience, indecision, misdirection, imperfection, disharmony; but they will not allow the presence in the human heart of a malign force which asserts itself against God, and against the order of His universe. That principle which is darkness in the mind, perverseness in the will, idolatry in the affections, “every passion’s wild excess, anger, lust, and pride,”–the existence of any such principle they absolutely and scornfully deny. There is no evil in the universe, all is good, and where everything is good human nature is still the best. A single substance comprises all that is, and no place is left for that profoundly decisive and destructive element called sin; all that we have to do is to descant on the marvelous loveliness of the world, the serene harmony of the universe, man’s love of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Intellectual masters like Emerson and Renan. ignore conscience; they refuse to acknowledge the selfishness, the baseness, the cruelty of society; they are deaf to the groans of creation; they smile, and expect us to smile, whilst they clap a purple patch of rhetoric on the running sores of humanity. No sackcloth must pass their gate, and no craftsman of Ind ever wove gossamer half so delicate and delightful as the verbal veil with which these literary artists attempt to conceal the leprosy of our nature.
And men generally are willing to dupe themselves touching the fact and power of sin; they are strongly disinclined to look directly and honestly at that inner confusion of which we are all more or less conscious. We willingly acknowledge our transgression of the higher law, that we do the things we ought not to do, and leave undone the things that we ought to do; we have an unpleasant feeling that all is not right, nay, indeed, that something is seriously wrong; but we do not unshrinkingly acquaint ourselves with the malady of the spirit as we should at once acquaint ourselves with any malady hinting itself in the flesh. The sackcloth must not mar our shallow happiness. Great is the power of self-deception, but in no other direction do we permit ourselves to be more profoundly cheated than we do in this. In the vision of beautiful things we forget the troubles of conscience, as the first sinners hid themselves amid the leaves and flowers of Paradise; in fashion and splendor we forget our guilty sorrow, as medieval mourners sometimes concealed their cerements with raiment of purple and gold; in the noises of the world we become oblivious of the interior discords, as soldiers forget their wounds amid the stir and trumpets of the battle. With a busy life, a gay life, we manage to forget the skeleton of the heart, rarely permitting ourselves to look upon the ominous specter which some way or other has entrenched itself within us, and which is the bane of our existence.
Nevertheless, sin thrusts itself upon our attention. The greatest thinkers in all ages have been constrained to recognize its presence and power. The creeds of all nations declare the fact that men everywhere feel the bitter working and intolerable burden of conscience. And, however we may strive to forget our personal sinfulness, the cry is ever being wrung from us in the deepest moments of life, “O wretched man that I am! who can deliver me from the body of this death?” The sense of sin has persisted through changing generations; it is the burden of experience and philosophy, and the genius of the race has exhausted itself in devising schemes of salvation.
Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, knew of truth, justice, purity, and love, of the supreme and eternal law of righteousness; they knew that man alone of all this lower creation is subject to this transcendental rule; they knew also that the violation of this highest law lay at the root of the world’s mysterious and complex suffering–in other words, that sin was the secret of the tragedy of life. The beasts are happy because they are beasts; they do not lie awake in the dark weeping over their sins, because they have no sins to weep over; they do not discuss their duty to God, they do it; whilst, on the contrary, men are unhappy because being subject to the highest law of all, and competent to fulfil that law in its utmost requirements, they have consciously fallen short of it, wilfully contradicted it. We cannot accept the coat of many colors, whatever the flatterers may say; the sackcloth is ours, and it eats our spirit like fire.
Most fully does Christ recognize the great catastrophe. Some modern theologians may dismiss sin as “a mysterious incident” in the development of humanity, as a grain of sand that has unluckily blown into the eye, as a thorn that has accidentally pierced our heel, but the greatest of ethical teachers regarded sin as a profound contradiction of that eternal will which is altogether wise and good. More than any other teacher Jesus Christ emphasized the actuality and awfulness of sin; more than any other has He intensified the world’s consciousness of sin. He never attempted to relieve us of the sackcloth by asserting our comparative innocence; He never attempted to work into that melancholy robe one thread of color, to relieve it with one solitary spangle of rhetoric. Sin was the burden of the life of Christ because it is the burden of our life. Christ has done more than insisted on the reality, the odiousness, the ominousness, of sin–He has laid bare its principle and essence. The New Testament discovers to us the mystery of iniquity as ungodliness; its inmost essence being unbelief in God’s truth, the denial of His justice, the rejection of His love, the violation of His law. The South Sea islanders have a singular tradition to account for the existence of the dew. The legend relates that in the beginning the earth touched the sky, that being the golden age when all was beautiful and glad; then some dreadful tragedy occurred, the primal unity was broken up, the earth and the sky were torn asunder as we see them now, and the dewdrops of the morning are the tears that nature sheds over the sad divorce. This wild fable is a metaphor of the truth; the beginning of all evil lies in the alienation of the spirit of man from God, in the divorce of earth from heaven; here is the final reason why the face of humanity is wet with tears. How vividly Christ taught that all our fear and we arise out of this false relation of our spirit to the living God! Above and beyond all, Christ recognizes the sackcloth that He may take it away. In the anguish of his soul Job cried, “I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou Preserver of men?” Christianity is God’s full and final answer to that appeal. In Christ we have the revelation of God’s ceaseless, immeasurable, eternal love. In Him we have the satisfaction of God’s sovereign justice. Our own awakened conscience feels the difficulty of absolution; it demands that sin shall not be lightly passed over; it wearies itself to find an availing sacrifice and atonement. “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!” In Him, too, we have that grace which brings us into accord with the mind and government of God. Christ reveals to us the divine ideal life; He awakens in us a passion for that life; He leads us into the power and privilege, the liberty and gladness, of that life. He fills our imagination with the vision of His own divine loveliness; He refreshes our will from founts of unfathomable power; He fills us with courage and hope; He crowns us with victory. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” Sin is ungodliness; Christ makes us to see light in God’s light, fills us with His love, attunes our spirit to the infinite music of His perfection. Instead of shutting out the signs of wo, Christ followed an infinitely deeper philosophy; He arrayed Himself in the sackcloth, becoming sin for us who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We have redemption in His blood, even the forgiveness of sins; he established us in a true relation to the holy God; He restores in us the image of God; He fills us with the peace of God that passeth understanding.
Not in the spirit of a barren cynicism does Christ lay bare the ghastly wound of our nature, but as a noble physician who can purge the mortal virus which destroys us. He has done this for thousands; He is doing it now; in these very moments He can give sweet release to all who are burdened and beaten by the dire confusion of nature. Sin is a reality; absolution, sanctification, peace, are not less realities. Christ’s gate is not shut to the penitent, neither does He send him empty away. We go to Him in sackcloth, but we leave His presence in purity’s robe of snow, in honor’s stainless purple, in the heavenly blue of the holiness of truth. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Him, that He may give to the mourners in Zion beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
II. We consider the recognition by revelation of sorrow. Sackcloth is the raiment of sorrow, and as such it was interdicted by the Persian monarch. We still follow the insane course, minimizing, despising, masking, denying suffering. Society sometimes attempts this. The affluent entrench themselves within belts of beauty and fashion, excluding the sights and sounds of a suffering world. “Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music, like David; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.” So do opulent and selfish men still seek “to hide their heart in a nest of roses.” Literature sometimes follows the same cue. Goethe made it one of the rules of his life to avoid everything that could suggest painful ideas, and the taint of his egotism is on a considerable class of current literature which serenely ignores the morbid aspects of life. Art has yielded to the same temptation. The artist has felt that he was concerned only with strength, beauty, and grace; that he had nothing to do with weakness, agony, wretchedness, and death. Why should sorrow find perpetual remembrance in art? Pain will tear our bodies, but we will have no wrinkles on our statues; suffering will rend our heart, but we will have no shadows on our pictures. None clothed in sackcloth might enter the gate that is called Beautiful.
Most of us are inclined to the sorry trick of gilding over painful things. We resolutely put from us sober signs, serious thoughts, and sometimes are really angry with those who exhibit life as it is, and who urge us to seek reconciliation with it. When the physician prescribed blisters to Marie Bashkirtseff to check her consumptive tendency, the vain, cynical girl wrote, “I will put on as many blisters as thee like. I shall be able to hide the mark by bodices brimmed with flowers and lace and tulle, and a thousand other delightful things that are worn, without being required; it may even look pretty. Ah! I am comforted.” Yes, by a thousand artifices do we dissemble our ugly scars, sometimes even pressing our deep misfortunes into the service of our pride. Many of the fashions and the diversions of the world much sought after have little positive attractiveness, but the real secret of their power is found in the fact that they hide disagreeable things, and render men for a while oblivious of the mystery and weight of an unintelligible world.
Nevertheless suffering is a stern fact that will not long permit us to sleep. Some have taught the unreality of pain, but the logic of life has spoiled their plausible philosophizing. A man may carry many hallucinations with him to the grave, but a belief in the unreality of pain is hardly likely to be one of them. The laughing philosopher is quite invincible on his midsummer’s day, but ere long fatality makes him sad. There is no screen to shut off permanently the spectacle of suffering. When Marie Antoinette passed to her bridal in Paris, the halt, the lame, and the blind were sedulously kept out of her way, lest their appearance should mar the joyousness of her reception; but,